Head of Data Engineering, Corporate & Enterprise

The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America; United States; On-site; USD 152,000 - 250,000; Full time

Job summary

The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America is seeking a Head of Data Engineering for Corp & Enterprise to lead end-to-end data engineering, MDM operations on Reltio, and a globally distributed delivery model. The role blends strategic vision with hands-on problem solving in a large enterprise environment.

You will drive AI-assisted data engineering, set data contracts and SLAs, and partner with AI/ML, analytics, and application teams to deliver AI-ready data products across governance and

Qualifications

• 12+ years of progressive data engineering experience.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end data engineering for Corporate & Enterprise data products.

Skills

Data engineering leadership

Team leadership

AI-assisted engineering

Agentic AI in engineering

End-to-end data lifecycle

Data governance

MA/MDM expertise

Cloud data platforms

ETL/ELT

Code reviews and architecture

Tools

Databricks

Airflow

Spark

dbt

Kafka

Fivetran

Job description

Position Overview

The Head of Data Engineering, Corp & Enterprise is a mid-leadership role accountable for the end-to-end data engineering lifecycle across Guardian's Corporate and business unit and Enterprise, from source data acquisition, ingestion, and transformation through the delivery of trusted, production-ready data products that power AI, ML, reporting, analytics, and business applications. This leader owns the strategy, architecture direction, engineering execution, and operational health of the data supply chain that downstream teams depend on every day. This is a player-coach role. The Head of Data Engineering leads a team of US FTEs and provides direction to an extended indirect engineering team in India, building a high-performing, globally distributed delivery model with clear standards, strong engineering discipline, and a culture of ownership. While the role is primarily a leadership position, the leader is expected to stay technically current and go hands-on when needed reviewing designs, unblocking complex engineering problems, and setting the bar for quality through example. A core mandate of this role is ownership and maturing Guardian's Master Data Management (MDM) practice. The leader will manage MDM operations and evolve the practice from foundational capability to enterprise-grade discipline - strengthening match and merge rules, survivorship, golden record quality, data stewardship workflows, and domain expansion. Deep, practical knowledge of Reltio is essential, including its data model, match engine, workflows, integrations, and APIs. Equally important, this leader carries a transformation mandate: to take data engineering to its next level using AI agents and agentic AI. This means reimagining how pipelines are built, tested, monitored, and healed: embedding AI-assisted development, autonomous data quality and observability agents, and agentic workflows across the engineering lifecycle to dramatically increase speed, reliability, and scale. The right candidate sees agentic AI not as a tool to adopt, but as a new operating model for data engineering and has the vision and pragmatism to lead the organization and the new operating model.

Key Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end data engineering for the Corporate business units and Enterprise - source data acquisition, ingestion, integration, transformation, curation, and publication of production-ready data products for AI, ML, reporting, analytics, and application consumption
• Define and execute the data engineering strategy and multi-year roadmap, aligned to business unit priorities and Guardian's enterprise data and AI strategy
• Lead, coach, and develop a team of FTE data engineers; provide direction, standards, and delivery oversight to an indirect engineering team in India, operating a seamless follow-the-sun global delivery model
• Operate as a player-coach, remain hands‑on as needed with solution design, code and pipeline reviews, complex troubleshooting, and critical delivery moments
• Own and manage the MDM platform and operations on Reltio, including data modeling, match/merge rules, survivorship, workflows, integrations, and API‑based consumption
• Mature the MDM practice into an enterprise‑grade discipline, improve golden record quality, expand mastered domains, strengthen data stewardship and governance workflows, and measure and communicate MDM business value
• Lead the transformation of data engineering using agentic AI, deploy AI agents for pipeline development, code generation, testing, documentation, data quality monitoring, anomaly detection, and self‑healing operations
• Champion AI‑assisted engineering practices across the team, redefining team workflows, productivity expectations, and engineering roles for an agentic future
• Deliver governed, discoverable, reusable data products with clear contracts, SLAs, lineage, and ownership, treating data as a product with defined consumers and measurable quality
• Partner closely with AI/ML, analytics, reporting, and application teams to ensure data products are AI‑ready, supporting feature pipelines, model training data, and retrieval‑ready datasets for GenAI use cases
• Establish and enforce engineering standards, reusable patterns, CI/CD, DataOps automation, and observability across all pipelines and platforms
• Build reusable tools, libraries, frameworks, and shared services that productize and scale engineering best practices, and actively drive their adoption across Data Engineering to accelerate delivery, raise quality, and eliminate duplicated effort
• Drive data quality, reliability, and operational excellence - define SLAs/SLOs, reduce incidents, and ensure resilient, cost‑optimized cloud data platform operations
• Embed data governance, privacy, security, and regulatory compliance requirements into all data engineering and MDM solutions in partnership with Data Governance, Cybersecurity, and Risk
• Manage vendor relationships and platform economics, including Reltio and cloud data platform spend, with a focus on value and FinOps discipline
• Influence and align senior business and technology stakeholders; translate business needs into engineering priorities and communicate progress, risks, and outcomes with clarity
• Recruit, retain, and grow top engineering talent; build succession depth and elevate the technical maturity of both onshore and offshore teams
• Available for production incidents with major impact to business operations

You Have

• 12+ years of progressive data engineering experience, including 5+ years leading data engineering teams and delivery at scale in a large enterprise and have experience in Finance, actuaries, HR related data and workflows
• Proven experience leading globally distributed teams, including direct FTE leadership and indirect/offshore teams in India, within a matrixed organization
• Demonstrated ability to operate as a player‑coach - setting strategy and leading people while staying hands‑on with architecture, design, and engineering when needed
• Deep expertise across the end‑to‑end data engineering lifecycle: data acquisition, batch and streaming ingestion, ELT/ETL, data modeling, curation, and productionization of data products
• Strong hands‑on knowledge of the modern data stack including cloud data platforms (e.g., Fivetran, Databricks), orchestration (e.g., Databricks, Airflow), transformation frameworks (e.g., Spark, dbt), streaming (e.g., Kafka), and CI/CD‑driven DataOps
• A strong software engineering mindset and execution skills, with a proven track record of designing and building reusable tools, libraries, and frameworks, applying sound software design principles, testing, and documentation, and driving their adoption across engineering teams to multiply productivity and impact
• Strong Master Data Management expertise with deep, practical knowledge of Reltio - data modeling, match/merge and survivorship configuration, workflows, integrations, and APIs and a track record of maturing an MDM practice
• Forward‑leaning experience with AI‑assisted and agentic engineering using LLMs and AI agents for code generation, testing, data quality, observability, and autonomous operations and a compelling vision for agent‑driven data engineering
• Experience delivering AI/ML‑ready data and GenAI/retrieval‑ready data foundations
• Strong grounding in data governance, data quality, metadata, lineage, and privacy/security practices, ideally in a regulated industry such as insurance or financial services
• A data‑as‑a‑product mindset with experience defining data contracts, SLAs, and consumer‑driven design
• Excellent leadership and communication skills, with the ability to influence senior stakeholders and convey complex technical concepts to business audiences
• Experience with Agile / product‑based delivery models and managing delivery across onshore/offshore teams
• A bias for action, high standards, and the ability to balance transformation ambition with operational stability

Location

Three days a week at a Guardian location on Holmdel, NJ, New York, NY, or Bethlehem, PA

Salary Range

$152,290.00 - $250,195.00 The salary range reflected above is a good faith estimate of base pay for the primary location of the position. The salary for this position ultimately will be determined based on the education, experience, knowledge, and abilities of the successful candidate. In addition to salary, this role may also be eligible for annual, sales, or other incentive compensation.

Our Promise

At Guardian, you’ll have the support and flexibility to achieve your professional and personal goals. Through skill‑building, leadership development and philanthropic opportunities, we provide opportunities to build communities and grow your career, surrounded by diverse colleagues with high ethical standards. Inspire Well‑Being As part of Guardian’s Purpose - to inspire well‑being - we are committed to offering contemporary, supportive, flexible, and inclusive benefits and resources to our colleagues. Explore our company benefits at www.guardianlife.com/careers/corporate/benefits. Benefits apply to full‑time eligible employees. Interns are not eligible for most Company benefits.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Guardian is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will be considered for employment without regard to age, race, color, creed, religion, sex, affectional or sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, marital status, disability, military or veteran status, or any other classification protected by applicable law.

Accommodations

Guardian is committed to providing access, equal opportunity and reasonable accommodation for individuals with disabilities in employment, its services, programs, and activities. Guardian also provides reasonable accommodations to qualified job applicants (and employees) to accommodate the individual's known limitations related to pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions, unless doing so would create an undue hardship. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or to receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please contact [e-mail]. Please note: this resource is for accommodation requests only. For all other inquires related to your application and careers at Guardian, refer to the Guardian Careers site.

Visa Sponsorship

Guardian Life is not currently or in the foreseeable future sponsoring employment‑based visas (e.g., such as an H-1B). In order to be a successful applicant, you must be legally authorized to work in the United States, without the need for employer sponsorship/support now or at any time in the future.

Notice Regarding Guardian's Use of Artificial Intelligence in Recruitment

As part of Guardian's job application process, Guardian may use artificial intelligence tools ("AI Tools") to automate the sorting and filtering of information provided by applicants as part of its preliminary screening. This preliminary screening may be used to help identify applicant materials and resumes relative to their indication that the applicant meets the requirements for the specific job for which they are applying, as specified in the listing posted on Guardian's jobs website (Careers at Guardian at https://www.guardianlife.com/careers). At Guardian, we do not use AI Tools to substantially assist or replace human judgment or discretionary decision making in our hiring process. All hiring decisions will be made by Guardian colleagues. Please be aware that if you apply for a specific position with Guardian, you will have the choice of opting out of Guardian's use of AI Tools during the job application process. If you would like to request an alternative process that does not utilize AI Tools or would like to request a reasonable accommodation, within ten business days of your position application, you must email your request to [e-mail], making sure to provide your name and job requisition identification number. Guardian will retain your applicant materials and resume and all information therefrom in accordance with Guardian's document retention policy, a copy of which you may request via [e-mail]. Additionally, at applicable times, Guardian will make public the most recent bias audit results for such AI tools, which may